Business establishments such as convenience stores, and restaurants, for example, typically handle large amounts of cash, particularly in the form of paper money, on a daily basis. To reduce risk of the cash being stolen by robbers, these establishments tend to maintain only a minimal amount of cash in a cash register, and periodically transfer accumulated cash to an on-site safe or drop safe. A drop safe is preferred because it permits cashiers to deposit cash into the drop safe without giving the cashiers access to the contents of the drop safe. The drop safe is typically fitted with a slot into which the cash is either directly deposited, or the cash is first placed into an envelope before it is placed into the slot. In either case the cash is deposited into the drop safe without having to open the drop safe. Transferring the accumulated cash to the drop safe several times in a day reduces the amount of money present at a cash register, thereby reducing the potential exposure of the cash to loss due to robbery.
Some drop safes include electronic bill validation which allows the drop safes to not only receive cash deposits but to also provide some form of automation for reconciliation before the safe is opened by a security company or other intermediaries.
Larger business establishments typically rely on a security company or other intermediary to withdraw the cash deposited in their drop safes at the end of the day or week and transfer it to a bank for safekeeping.
To help business establishments track the cash deposits into and out from the drop safe, electronic drop safes have been designed with bill counting and validation capabilities, in addition to information recording capabilities for tracking specifics of deposits and withdrawals, maintenance/service issues etc., and information networking capabilities for relaying the information off site.
Although advances in electronic drop safes have lead to increased capabilities and features, they unfortunately come at an increased cost. Typically, the advances in electronic drop safes require integrated screens, buttons, and key pads to function. The screens display information, feature rich menus, and command prompts to users, while the buttons and key pads register user selections, instructions, and commands. However, screens, buttons, and keypads increase the cost of electronic drop safes due to the additional hardware, the additional complexity of integrating the additional hardware, and the additional complexity of the software needed to operate the additional hardware. The additional hardware is also prone to failure which requires expensive repairs.